The world is inside out

So, in the news today I learned that Hans Reiser is suspected of killing his estranged wife, and that Yahoo is organizing, and indeed paying for, "a time capsule" data transmission to be beamed into space from the ancient pyramid of Teotihuacan in Mexico. This is too much to take after spending a day selling rotten insurance packages to people who don't want them; I have a great personal respect for Hans Reiser's work on the ReiserFS filesystem, and in fact in the past have praised him for it to friends. It's hard to believe that someone you respected (despite having never met them) could have murdered a person... though we'll see about that. But, as if that weren't enough, what is a business doing wearing a tin foil UFO hat for the world to see? I have no problem with the project itself... but going out of your way to set up shop at the Teotihuacan pyramid is just loopy. Suddenly it's less of an idealistic thing to do and more of an homage to the crackpots and crazies that set up lawn chairs around Area 51 fences and camp out at Roswell every time their dog barks. Yahoo is publicly traded! Suddenly my confidence in Yahoo has gone from weak to an active leeriness of management sanity.

What is going on!? Tonight, in two places that I expect to see stability, I've discovered behavior that I cannot reconcile with reason. Perhaps I should join the rest of the world standing out in left field. Work is sending me that way anyway.